KITCHENER, Ontario — Andrew Flemming and Geoff Fowler tinkered for months in their spare time. They used soldering irons. They printed three-dimensional models in their basements. They brainstormed over beers in this small city about 60 miles west of Toronto, where they kept their project quiet.

“We did a fair bit of work in bars,” Flemming said.

Flemming and Fowler, both 29, along with their friend and business partner, Will Hamilton, 37, were pouring their creative energies into a high-tech training device the likes of which the sporting world had never seen.

These factors drove the team behind SmartBroom to turn to Hyphen in the initial design stages of its PT-2, a training aide for elite-level curling teams looking to improve their performance. SmartBroom gathers data from a curler’s sweeping movements so that they can be reviewed later by coaches.

On March 27-30, 26 coaches from Ontario, Northern Ontario, B.C., Quebec and Alberta gathered at the Glendale Golf and Country Club in Hamilton, Ont., for the Canadian Curling Association’s first Competition Development Curling Workshop.